Category: Standard Stuff

The Holiday season is a great time to visit a Disney theme park. Not only are guests introduced to seasonal food and entertainment offerings, but the Holiday decor ranges from blindingly apparent (a 60-foot-tall Christmas tree) to charmingly subtle (Holiday-themed paper cups), and rewards curious visitors who scout around.

It’s easy to underestimate how much a person can enjoy quasi-European splendor combined with American commercialism.

Although all the domestic parks and resorts get makeovers,* the biggest concentration is in Disneyland and Magic Kingdom. The element that binds it all together and moves you from land to land is the atmospheric Holiday music; and the loop on Main Street, U.S.A. is a particular pleasure. The songs are a chime-y mix of Christmas standards, and sound like they came straight out of a December cocktail party at Walt and Lillian’s house.

[*One of the under-appreciated wonders of modern management is the decoration of six theme parks and thirty resort hotels by Disney cast members in Florida and California. Not only is the level of detail astounding, but most of the work is completed without the guests seeing it happen.]

The authoritative breakdown of the Main Street, U.S.A. loop was compiled by the great Al Lutz, and his post is the starting point for these notes. I highly recommend clicking over, it’s great. In fact, go ahead and do that right now. This will still be here when you get back. Although, I mean, make sure and come back, too! Haha, don’t just… you know; click away and stay away. You know what? I am overthinking it. Just… do whatever you want.

Assuming you have come back from Al’s post, and with the background out of the way, let’s dive into the Main Street, U.S.A. Holiday music loop notes. The songs in each category are listed in no particular order.

We belong to a Disney Crew, or a Disney Squad, as the kids might call it these days. This is a fellowship of a dozen or so family and friends who are all long-term Disney fans; and who have spent excessive time, money, and brain cells in service to the Mouse. We have occupied many happy hours with members of the Crew, talking comprehensively* about all things Disney.

[*I do mean comprehensively. From Disney history, to trivia, to debates about rides, movies, and park amenities — right down to the very ideas and concepts behind the whole empire — these conversations are high-level nerdery.]

Just a couple of our crew members, uh, dancing? Which we totally do all the time… I guess?

So, when The Walt Disney Company announced that one of their oldest theme parks will be the focus of a multi-billion dollar makeover, we got all excited to talk about it with the Crew. More specifically, we wanted to wildly speculate about what it might mean when Parks and Resorts Chairman Bob Chapek declares Disney would be doing “…some major transformation at Epcot in the future.”

For this Deep Forest Outpost Disney Conversation, Amy and I sat down with frequent collaborators and fellow travelers Rich and Hydee. Both are deeply intelligent and well versed about a great many things, including Disney. We tend to lean on Rich for his analysis and linear thinking, whereas Hydee is our keeper of “Disney Lore” and has an encyclopedic knowledge of the characters and media.

The DONALD Rankings are scores for Disney animated films that combine personal opinion with a pseudo-scientific veneer of hard data. For a full introduction to the DONALD system, please go here. Contribute your scores in the comments!

The next film on our Top 20 list is Inside Out from Pixar, which won the 2015 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Based on a story by director Pete Docter (Up) and co-director Ronnie del Carmen (a key story guy at Pixar since 2000), Inside Out follows the life of 11-year-old Riley Andersen through the lens of five personified emotions that control her interaction: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, and Fear.

I suspect the inside of a typical 11-year-old’s head is actually much weirder than this.

Inside Out is anchored by an extraordinary and complex story, with deeper concepts not often found in a family film. It was also the first Pixar film created without input from studio co-founder Steve Jobs, who passed away in 2011. Pixar moved forward with admirable poise, especially when contrasted to the precipitous dip in quality at Walt Disney Animation Studios that followed the passing of their visionary founder in 1966.

Inside Out received universal critical acclaim, and was screened at all of the swankiest gatherings of film buffs, including the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. It was praised as the strongest Pixar film in recent years, and reviewers used expressions like “transcendent,” “buoyant,” and “therapeutic” in their breathless descriptions.

But how does it stack up against the greatest Disney animated films of all time? Pretty well, actually…

The DONALD Rankings are scores for Disney animated films that combine personal opinion with a pseudo-scientific veneer of hard data. For a full introduction to the DONALD system, please go here. Contribute your scores in the comments!

Welcome back the top twenty of the Deep Forest Outpost DONALD Rankings. Today we continue our countdown with the Pixar gem Finding Nemo.

“Have you ever thought about the fact that we swim around in our own poop all the time?”

When Finding Nemo hit the theaters in 2003, Pixar was still an independent studio distributing under the Walt Disney Studios banner. Their films were also a high point in the flagging animation division at Disney*. Both groups threatened to walk away ahead of their merger in 2006, citing massive executive egos and demands for more money and power as the reasons for the divide (more or less).

[*Disney’s animated releases during the Pixar distribution deal included Dinosaur, Treasure Planet, and Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Probably unnecessary spoiler alert here, but none of those films will be included in the DONALD Top 20.]

Pixar knocked another one out of the ballpark with Finding Nemo, which sparkles with amazing animation, great characters, and a clever story. Their streak of success put Disney in an untenable position. The Mouse House eventually caved, put John Lasseter and Ed Catmull in charge of all animation, and kicked off the next/current renaissance of Disney films.

If you didn’t read Part One, please find it here. If you are already exhausted by clicking internet links all day, then do whatever you want. I’m not your dad.

In Part One we revealed the three principles for enjoying a Disney park vacation:

Willingness to try

A small measure of imagination

Resolved budget concerns

This one photo captures at least three of the six practices…

But that was just the preparation round of this (needlessly complicated?) strategy guide. To really visit a Disney park like a pro, we also need to address what to do when there.

In Part One we also referenced conversations with friends about surviving a Disney trip. Like the three principles, the following six practices are developed from those discussions over the course of many years. The practices are flexible and should be adapted to each individual’s requirements and interests.

Although we recommend trying everything, it’s better not to focus on all six practices the entire time. Decide which ones you enjoy the most*. It’s still a vacation, after all; no need to bring a checklist.

As a Disney Parks and Resorts fan, I recognize that some people will never understand the appeal. A percentage of the population is just not wired for entering a world of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy, and I am fine with that. Everyone has something they like, and it’s okay if it’s not Disney-related. Besides, the parks are crowded enough as it is.

Yep, nothing cool to see here. At ALL. You’re not missing anything, just stay at home…

But visiting a Disney park has also become a rite of passage. Kids reach a certain age, and adults feel compelled to take them to Walt Disney World/Disneyland, whether they want to spend the time and money or not. This is an easy path to miserable experiences for all. Nobody has fun on a trip when the people paying for it are irritated the entire time.

I always feel bad when I spot one of those unhappy groups, because it is certainly possible for a non-fan to enjoy their vacation to a Disney park. I mean, it shouldn’t be that hard, right? Every year, millions of guests visit thousands of acres of design and technology dedicated to just that proposition.

Happy Thanksgiving from the Deep Forest Outpost! We hope you have a wonderful day filled with loved ones, laughter, and mountains of food. Or whatever you want your day to be filled with — hey, we just want you to be happy.

Pictured: Mickey on the way to his very first Thanksgiving dinner. Unfortunately, Walt Disney had not drawn any friends for him yet.

I was conducting my morning rituals the other day when I started wondering what it would be like to have Thanksgiving dinner with Mickey Mouse and his friends (I often have these deep thoughts while sudsing). The brainstorming ground proved fertile, and I started taking notes. Who would play all those critical parts in the holiday drama? How would it measure up to our own family meals? These were ideas that needed exploring.

So exercise your imagination for a few minutes with me and come along as we spend the holiday with Mickey and company…

Amy continued shooting frame after frame, seemingly unfazed by the presence of the most dangerous wild animal in North America. I felt a fierce rush of admiration for her courage.

The first drawing of Tower Falls, probably.

The grizzly bear — for there was no doubt this was a grizzly — continued its advance down the hill toward us. The bear was making quiet snuffling noises, and I combed my knowledge of the animal. Was snuffling a sign of irritation?

I thought of my deep affection for bears. Being eaten by one would not make me as posthumously mad as if I was eaten by, say, a great white shark.

As the grizzly moved closer, we noticed something extraordinary: three more bears. We were facing a female bear guarding her cubs. Darkness was closing in.

Saturday, May 14

It was the second morning of our slapdash vacation to Yellowstone National Park, and we roused ourselves with the energy and zip of a pair of experimental lobotomy patients. We were in room 307 of a (possibly haunted) Best Western hotel.

We hurried down the path, going a bit too fast, rushing against the dying light. Our time was dwindling. Our quarry might be just over the next hill, or crossing a distant meadow, and so we kept moving.

We did not even know for sure what we were hunting, or whether we would find it.

Old posters are the best posters. Image by National Park Service [Public Domain] via Wikimedia CommonsThen we rounded a corner and felt a subconscious, animal tingle warning us that something was not quite right. A hazy figure to our left came into focus in stages, like looking at the face of a stranger for a few moments before discovering you have stumbled upon an old acquaintance. But once resolved, it was unmistakable.

Twenty feet ahead, with nothing but empty ground and clear air between us, was the most dangerous wild animal in North America.

Amy slowly raised the aperture to her eye, her finger hovering over the trigger. “Cool,” she whispered.

Thursday, May 12

Here’s a nugget of information about us: our modus operandi is long lead times with heavy emphasis on strategic planning. We would never buy, say, a refrigerator, without research, deliberation, and several (several!) trips to the home improvement store for in-person evaluation. One time, and this is a true story, we decided to rescue a cat from our local shelter as company for our current cat, and making that happen took us longer than the Summer Olympics. Continue reading “Dispatches from America’s Great Wonder-Land, Part 1”→

The DONALD Scores are rankings for Disney animated films that combine personal opinion with a pseudo-scientific veneer of hard data. For a full introduction to the DONALD system, please go here. Please contribute your scores in the comments!

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For the very first review under my new system, I decided start with an overlooked gem. It goes without saying that I will post reviews of all of the highest and lowest ranked movies. But with 70+ films on our list, and more coming every year, it may take a while to get to the titles in the middle.

Released in 2003, Brother Bear was squished between the surprise popularity of Lilo and Stitch and the ascendancy of Pixar and Finding Nemo. But Brother Bear was a decent entry in its own right, with good music, solid voice acting, and an interesting twist. In case it is not obvious, there are some plot spoilers below. Let’s jump to the numbers…